Phone
December 2011

I just hopped off the exercise bike after riding for two hours. I used to hate exercise bikes, but my iPhone has changed that. I now exercise while listening to Pandora Radio and reading Hacker News or NPR for an hour or two every day, thanks to this little piece of technology. I’ve had my 4S for about a month now, and I was pretty exited when I got it – but I had no idea that it was going to significantly change my lifestyle.

So indeed, I now listen to Pandora Radio every time I jump in the car to head between Cary, Raleigh and Durham, which is usually at least once or twice a day as well as every time I get on the exercise bike. It’s making these extremely tedious, time-consuming tasks fun and productive.

I’ve also developed the habit of voice-recording myself every day or so as a method of journalism and verbal-essaying (and man, it’s faster than writing and sure does a better job of capturing emotion than writing). I’ll usually then go back and listen to my thoughts later on and use the recordings to analyze myself and see if I’m growing as a person and to help better develop my thoughts. I’ve also done some experiments where I’ve recorded myself having conversations with people, which is absolutely fascinating to go back and listen to. Because of the instant 3rd-person perspective instant feedback, I can use it to increase my charisma and train myself to be a better listener.

The phone has almost completely removed my need to use my once-awesome-yet-clunky Garmin GPS for the car that takes about two minutes to boot up – plus, Google Maps is infinitely better than Garmin’s map – it’s more completely and always up-to-date.

I rarely need to get on the computer anymore – I can check my email, Facebook, Twitter, and look things up on the internet instantly. In fact, the main reason I even need to get my laptop now is to write long pieces of text or when I’m computer programming – aside from that, the iPhone is not only sufficient, but preferable.

The mobile phone is clearly the most innovative, disruptive piece of technology to visit our planet since the internet and is moving us that much closer to singularity. It combines so many previously seperate pieces of technology:

Computer

Newspaper

Calculator

Compass

GPS

Alarm Clock

Stopwatch

Pedometer

Journal

Mail

Phone

Camera

Radio

MP3 Player

Gameboy/PSP/DS

Scanner

Voice Recorder

Flashlight

Address Book

Notepad

To Do List

Planner/Calendar

It’s literally as if we are able to carry every single one of these devices around in our pocket at the same time, and have them work flawlessly in sync. It’s quite a bit like magic. Let me emphasize: this is really freaking significant.

This little piece of the future is so immensely powerful and lifestyle changing… the seemingly expensive $600 up front and $40 a month it costs is easily under priced. I would pay more for this if I had to, knowing how much utility it provides me on a daily basis.